Discussion Forum
This is a forum to discuss the gray areas of the English language for which you would not find answers easily in dictionaries or other reference books.
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Someone told me that “email” does not have a plural form “emails” because it is used in the same manner as “mail”, which means that “an email” is wrong also. So, I suppose I should be saying: “I received a piece of email from John.” as opposed to: “I received an email from John.”
Why sister? Why not “brother company”?
In the following sentence, which is correct: has or have.
The ranks of the liberal weblog community (has or have) increased by one.
When is “trouble” a countable noun? In what context, would you say “a trouble” or “troubles”?
“He is trouble.” “He gave me a lot of trouble.”
In both cases above, I’m tempted to say:
“He is a trouble.” “He gave me a lot of troubles.”
Every media organization had its pick. The implication for each is quite interesting.
1. War in Iraq: This implies that it is a war that is happening in Iraq, almost as though it just happens to be happening IN Iraq. It manages to stay neutral on the political and ideological stance of the war.
2. War on Iraq: This sounds strong. It is almost equivalent to saying “war against Iraq.” It implies either that the enemy is Iraq as a nation or Iraq as the regime. The latter being the preferred implication of the Bush administration.
3. War with Iraq: Now, what does this imply? “With” is a funny preposition to use, because it makes it sounds friendly, like, “We are doing this together.”
In New Yorker, I read:
“There was a cold wind and an intermittent drizzle.”
A cold wind and a drizzle together would make two things. Shouldn’t it be “There were”?
Journalists are now either “embedded with...” or “embedded”. Shouldn’t it be “embedded in a troop?” Not quite sure how this phrase should be used -- it is indeed a terrible replacement for simply saying: “so-and-so is with the 3rd Cavalry division.”
I know that commas and periods go inside quotation marks, but I can’t help breaking this rule. Firstly, they look better outside. Secondly it doesn’t make sense, at least to me. For instance:
From the crowd I heard, “apple!,” “orange!,” “grape!,” and “banana!.”
For each expression, the exclamation mark makes sense to be within the double-quotes because it functionally belongs to each person who is uttering it, but the commas do not. What the first person said is: “apple!” The comma has nothing to do with him. That is, he is not the one who is itemizing various fruits. As far as he is concerned, apple was the only thing he needed to express. Functionally speaking the comma belongs to the sentence, not to the expression. For me, it looks much better to write:
From the crowd I heard, “apple!”, “orange!”, “grape!”, and “banana!”.
This makes it clear what I am itemizing. Here is one quote, here is another, and so on..
“The sun” gets the article “the,” because there is only one sun. Anything that we have only one of, we put the article. How about “reality”? When we use the word “reality,” don’t we imply its absoluteness? If there are many realities, then the word loses its meaning, i.e., it is no longer reality but an interpretation. If I mean by “reality” something there is only one of, couldn’t I put the article? For example:
“Joe is out of touch with the reality.”
(with that, I mean one and the only reality; not a specific one.).
I was under the impression that “20 something” meant someone in his/her early 20s. Would a 29 year old be still considered “20 something”? When did this expression start?
